


Samson-Like

by grasssea



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hospitals, Medical Recovery, Thinly Veiled Pre-Biblical References, hair cutting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 21:24:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10907745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grasssea/pseuds/grasssea
Summary: Chloe recovers, Charlotte pays her a visit, old habits die hard.





	Samson-Like

**Author's Note:**

> Back to the basics, religion and medicine. Hair is such a big thing in early middle eastern cultures, especially if you were promised to a god. I'm still at mazethequeen.tumblr.com

>  
> 
> _ Since hair continues to grow throughout life (and apparently for a time after death), it was considered by the ancients to be the seat of man's vitality and life-force, and in ritual it often served as his substitute. A ninth-century B.C.E. bowl found in a Cypriot temple contains an inscription on its outside surface indicating that it contained the hair of the donor. It was placed there, if the reconstructed text is correct, as "a memorial" to Astarte (cf. Ex. 28:12, 29; 30:16; Num. 10:10; Zech. 6:14), i.e., as a permanent reminder to the goddess of the donor's devotion. _

  
  
  
  


  
Chloe’s recovery was slow and laborious, and made all the more exhausting by the fact that Lucifer continued to avoid her. He’d greeted her when she woke up, sent a truly excessive amount flowers, then studiously refused to respond to any of the calls or messages she sent once she wrested her phone back from Dan and the nurses. 

He was probably guilty again. He’d get over it, he always did, but not until she was on her feet again. That meant she needed to get better. 

It was not as easy a condition to meet as she might have assumed. The poison had carved its way through her body like an epidemic. She had internal bleeding from the blood thinning effects and the abrupt and rather catastrophic stress on her blood vessels. Her blood pressure was still all over the place. She’d done a truly impressive amount of damage to her liver. She was probably never going to be allowed to drink anything heavier than cider again, which was unfortunate. She really could have used a glass of wine during the recovery process.  

The doctors and nurses fussed if she tried to go to the bathroom by herself. Dan was no help, and neither were her coworkers, as far as they were concerned she’d finally overworked herself and needed to be tied to a bed until she recovered. Trixie was their willing co-conspirator. Chloe couldn’t resist her daughter’s big-eyed appeals to “get better, please mommy?” She knew things had gotten bad when her only ally in the fight against being coddled was  _ Maze _ , and it turned out Maze was useless in hospitals. She’d gotten kicked out twice. 

Chloe had to suffer through physical therapy and hospital food like everyone else, and it was hell. 

For the week she had her own room, while the FBI talked to her in whispers about “state secrets” and “don’t want to start a panic”, while everyone was still worried that her body might decide to shut down again. She could have lots of visitors and get Ella to bring her paperwork, write her reports and do her stretching in relative peace and silence. She could dream of Lucifer, and know she was alone. The second week they moved her to a shared room and she was officially out of the woods and back in with the general populace. That was… less fun. She liked her privacy. Erotic dreams got a lot less erotic when you knew your roommate, Enid, 70 years old and perpetually angry, was probably ten feet away, wide awake and listening. 

She couldn’t wait to be back in her own home, with Trixie and even Maze. She wanted her job back, she wanted her life back. She wanted to go drag Lucifer out of whatever emotional turmoil he was in now and kiss him senseless. 

She really, really wanted to stop eating jello from tiny plastic cups. Hospital gowns were similarly high up the list of things that needed to go. 

  
  
  


  
  
  
Dan was at work, Trixie was at school, the Feds had finally moved onto bigger and better crises, and Maze had been banned from the hospital for a week after helping Chloe plot a breakout attempt, so she wasn’t expecting any visitors until afternoon. 

The Universe, however, seemed dedicated to surprising her, so of course Amenadiel and Charlotte Richards showed up just as she was brushing her still-drying hair. 

(It needed a trim desperately, and she was bored out of her skull. Isolation did strange things to a brain that was used to constant movement.)

“Chloe, I hope we’re not interrupting.” Charlotte said, with a smile plastered over her face. She looked like an aging supermodel, and knowing LA maybe she was. She wouldn’t be the first entertainer turned cop, Chloe could attest to that. If she wasn’t so annoying, you could almost consider her a role model. 

“No, no, not really. Why are you here?” Chloe replied, stretching out her smile to match Charlotte’s. Amenadiel hovered in the background, a reassuringly non-slimy shadow compared to Charlotte’s Teflon presence. 

“We just came to check on you!” Charlotte enthused, fluttering over with quick, high-heeled steps. “See how you were doing. We brought chocolate.”

“Thanks,” Chloe drawled, and reluctantly put her comb away. “Is it even visiting hours?” she asked, and hoped they would get the hint to leave the chocolate and go. Sadly Charlotte Richards, though an evil genius, had all the social graces of a drowning giraffe. It was a wonder she’d made it so far in life. 

“Oh, it is, I checked twice,” Charlotte reassured her, settling in the chair as Amenadiel went to the foot of the bed and knelt to look at Chloe’s medical chart. That or he was hiding from the nurses, it was hard to tell. “So, how are you doing? Has Lucifer come and talked to you yet?”

“No, he’s probably busy with Lux,” Chloe said, forcing a smile. “He doesn’t like hospitals very much, I think.”

“Yes,” Charlotte frowned, “They are rather unfortunate places. So full of death, it’s unnerving.” She glanced over her shoulder as if she could see the souls flying around. “But you two shouldn’t let that stand in your way. You should be together, as often as possible. Relationships split up when there isn’t communication, when one party gets too distracted.”

Right, Charlotte’s strange investment in their love life. Chloe had almost forgotten about it. She blinked twice, and mentally readjusted her system to Total Irrationality Mode, reserved for Lucifer, some of the spacier perps, small children, and recently Charlotte Richards. 

“Well, if we were in a relationship I would take that under consideration,” she said, “But right now we’re just partners and very, very close friends.” Very close friends who had kissed, yes, but that wasn’t something she needed to disclose to a very odd stranger. 

“What? You mean-” Charlotte cut herself off as Amenadiel stood and gave her a Look. 

“M-Charlotte, please. It’s none of your business, and I’m sure the detective doesn’t want to get into the details of her personal life.” His facial expression added,  _ And I don’t want to hear anything about it _ . 

Sometimes she could actually believe that Amenadiel and Lucifer were siblings, not just very similar people who bickered a lot. This was one of those times

“Yes, yes,” Charlotte said soothingly, with a fondness that made Chloe do a double take. Surely she wasn’t sleeping with him as well? Although, maybe that explained why she and Lucifer seemed so close. An in-law relationship he didn’t want to talk about, it made sense. 

Lost in thought and trying to puzzle out the Morningstar family tree, she missed all but the tail end of Charlotte’s question to her. 

“...keeping yourself busy?”

“Oh, yeah,” Chloe said, weakly. She was finally off the medications that made her feel like her brain wasn’t working right, but the lingering fog that accompanied sterile environments and dull schedules was getting to her. “I was just thinking about how I needed to cut my hair, that’s all. I’ll be back to work in a few weeks and it’s gotten long.”

She’d never believed in fancy salon haircuts, especially not after she had a kid. That was thirty dollars down the drain every few months, when she could do just as good a job at home. A loose ponytail, a second hair band near the bottom of her hair, and a quick cut usually did the trick. 

Charlotte’s face creased in distress, “You have such lovely hair, you can’t cut it!”

Chloe leaned back, off put by her vehemence. “I do have to keep it short for my job. It’s that or tie it up and I don’t like all that weight on my head. You should know that.” Talking to Charlotte sometimes felt like doing a verbal puzzle. There was something off about her, but Chloe couldn’t put her finger to it.

That seemed to mollify Charlotte, but only for a moment. She tottered forward on her ridiculous heels and said, “Well then, you simply must let us help you. You shouldn’t be taxing yourself in your delicate state.”   


“Really, it’s fine,” Chloe protested. Then she looked around. Enid was on the rooftop garden. All that was on television was trashy reality shows. She had nothing better to do. Letting Charlotte Richards near her head with sharp things seemed like a bad idea, but on the other hand, she lived with  _ Maze _ . 

“I can do it myself,” she said finally, “If you can just get me the scissors. The nurses have me on lockdown, too many people trying to bring guns into my room.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Here?” Charlotte asked nervously. Chloe could feel the dull edge of a scissors against the bottom of her shoulder blades. If Charlotte cut her now, she would have a scar almost like Lucifer’s. 

The blades were quivering but they seemed fairly straight. 

“Yeah, do it,” Chloe confirmed. Charlotte whispered something that sounded like a prayer, in a language she didn’t recognize. 

There was a snip and a few inches of hair, tied together by a pink elastic, fell onto the ground. 

Chloe pulled her hair out of it’s ponytail and carded her fingers through it. Passable. She wasn’t trying to win any awards for hair innovation here. It would do for work, when she was finally allowed to return to it. 

“Thank you,” she said, and counted that as her weird adventure for the day. Even without Lucifer or Maze, life had a way of filling in the gaps. 

Charlotte had her hair in her hands and was turning it between her fingers. Amenadiel put a hand on her arm. “Charlotte,” he said, “We should go. I’m sure Chloe is tired enough already.”

She wasn’t exactly tired, but she did want them to leave. 

“Tell Lucifer to call me?” she asked Amenadiel as he turned to go out the door.

He regarded her, solemn as a hymn. “I’ll try,” he said and she got the distinct sense that there was something he wasn’t telling her. 

When she got out of the hospital, she decided as she settled back into bed, she was going to go and track him down herself, after she ate some  _ actual _ food, and interrogate him about his weird family and his even weirder Charlotte. She would probably kiss him as well, but she tried to make a promise to herself to prioritize. 

She realized about an hour later, that Charlotte had taken her hair with her. 


End file.
